


Plato and Aristotle

by GwendolynGrace



Category: My Fair Lady (1964)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/pseuds/GwendolynGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Henry Higgins doesn't want Colonel Pickering to leave....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plato and Aristotle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox/gifts).



Professor Henry Higgins would always count it singular luck that Pickering arrived just at the same moment Eliza did. For one thing, although he had travelled extensively while collecting dialects and phonemes, he had hardly been anticipating with fervour a sojourn in the heat and steam of India. London, with its civilised conveniences and its soggy weather, suited him much better.

But it was more than the disruptions and annoyances of travel, really. In fact, he admitted to himself, if no one else, that he should never have managed the girl's transformation without Pickering's infernal patience and damned avuncular charm. Not that he'd ever have told Pickering - and give up a guinea? No.

Besides, the wager gave him the perfect opportunity to invite the Colonel to stay on much longer than would have been prudent, had the child not been in their care.

When Doolittle arrived, Henry thought the whole game might be lost. Pickering was sure to realise the folly of two grown, unmarried men entrusted with the well-being of a young, equally unmarried female. Not that she was in any danger from Henry, of course! Honestly, it wasn't even until three days after Mrs Pearce had scrubbed the urchin clean and Pickering had funded suitable attire that Henry even noticed the little beggar had a bosom. Not until the garden party had he even bothered to smell the perfume Pickering had provided. And certainly, not until the baggage had packed up, thrown her hysterical fit and gone - to his own mother's home, no less! - that he missed her ability to find and fetch his slippers with unfailing attentiveness.

And yet ... amidst the realisations, there was also one growing and present dread. Pickering bought and presented her with clothes. Pickering took time and trouble to select perfume, see to her hair, comfort her when Henry barked .... As their wager had drawn on, bringing its toils as every day their protègée struggled, triumphed, backslid and ultimately, shone, Pickering lingered. Their promised discourses on the Brahman dialects waited on the shelf while each night, after Eliza retired, Pickering dissected and examined Henry's technique with her.

'I say, my boy, that was a masterful use of vowel gradation. I do believe her diphthongs are quite improved.'

'Wherever did you find such an ideal tongue-twister, dear boy? Oh, I say, it absolutely forces the apex to strike the palate, doesn't it? Marvellous.'

'My dear chap, are you sure you are not going rather too hard on her? She's only a girl, and uneducated at that. Why, I thought she might burst into those crocodilian tears right before us. Really, dear fellow, you must remember that you've crammed such an awful lot into her in such a short interval.'

Henry would debate his methods late into the evening, if only Pickering would continue to call him 'dear' and 'my boy.' Still, it did not escape his notice that the Colonel was just as solicitous of Eliza, and that it was to her his paternal impulses extended, just as much or more than to Henry.

He told himself it was pointless to feel jealousy. After all, Pickering was getting on in years, had never married, had spent most of his adult life in India, and here they were training up Miss Doolittle to be the perfect--what? Wife? Lady? Well, she'd do, at any rate. Pickering could easily have parlayed her natural feelings of gratitude into a lifelong companionship, particularly if he were willing to pay off the father. Doolittle had no scruples at all and would gladly have seen his daughter married so long as it left him financially secure.

But then Pickering would leave, Eliza too, and Henry would remain with his blessed quiet and his sepulchral peace. Entombed at Number 27A Wimpole Street until the end of his days.

For a while, the more appealing, if more bitter thought occurred -- perhaps Eynsford-Hill would take her, as she threatened after Ascot Opening Day and after her ball performance. He knew better, ought to have known from the first that little Freddy loved nothing more than the size of a bank account. Truth be told, Henry did feel some remorse, vague regret on her behalf, when Eynsford-Hill forsook her for a bona fide heiress. His mother had made her views completely plain on the subject, and clearly expected wedding bells for Henry and Eliza just as soon as possible.

But then Pickering would leave. And Eliza would stay, and Henry would have not a moment's silence in which to study his cylinders and charts. And that would never do at all.

As it turned out, however, Pickering's interest in Eliza never strayed outside the avuncular, while the nights they stayed up discussing her welfare had turned into quiet evenings playing chess or puzzling over Sanskrit pronunciation or (Henry's favourite) simply reading together, companionably side-by-side. Even after Henry decided it was only right to propose to Eliza, Pickering made no move to shift himself to a town house of his own, or even back to a hotel. Henry did his best to make it clear that neither he nor Eliza had any wish to see him go, of course. Perhaps Pickering understood that he was as much a part of their success as Eliza's own devilish intelligence or Henry's immense skill as a tutor. Certainly he had given Pickering no reason to believe he had any personal stake in keeping the Colonel as a fixture in his household.

It was one evening, shortly after the Times had announced his engagement to Miss Doolittle, when the conversation that would forever alter their silent regard for one another occurred. Eliza had retired early, as usual, leaving Henry and Pickering to their amiable debates, this time over the use of a voiced 'g' as used by the Thuggee cults outside of Delhi.

'No, my dear fellow,' Pickering said, 'I'm afraid I must correct you. Thuggee have no dialect of their own, or if they have, no white man may expect to get near enough to find out, not without a garotting for his trouble.'

'Well, let us go to India and find out,' Henry challenged, altogether reasonably in his estimation.

'What? And leave Eliza right after promising to wed her? Henry, are you ... less than happy in your impending matrimony?'

Henry set down the decanter of brandy rather too quickly. 'No, of course not, Pickering. Eliza is a good girl, always has been.'

'But, dear boy, if you love her why run off on a pretext such as this?'

'Pretext?' Henry sputtered. 'There's no bloody pretext at all, but research, Pickering. Research! Eliza may come if she likes, or stay if she prefers.'

'Henry.' Pickering stopped his pacing with his name. Every so often, Henry forgot that Pickering had been a Colonel. His tone now, though still kind, had all the firm disapproval of a father on discovering his son had gambled away the family fortune. 'Think about what you are doing. Eliza deserves your respect, not because you have transformed her into a lady, but because she is another one of our Queen's subjects and because you are older than she and ought to know better. Now answer the question: Do you love Eliza?'

Henry rubbed his chin with his forefinger. 'Dash it, Pickering, I would hardly have asked her to marry me otherwise!'

"Ah, but in the same breath, you told me to stay, not to think of leaving.' The Colonel poured himself another brandy and drank it before sinking back, heavily, into his chair. 'I would have done, you know. But....'

'But?' Henry felt he had been assigned the role of a parrot in this bizarre conversation.

'But, I sensed that it would make neither of us truly happy. I worried that Eliza might see it, that she might discover how you really felt -- how _I_ really felt -- if I stayed. But I couldn't bring myself to leave.'

'Pickering, do you mean to say....' Henry had no idea what he'd been about to ask. 'Pickering, do come to the point, if you have one, man,' he said instead, in rather a more blustery way than he'd intended. But Pickering would understand, that was the beauty of the man. He never over-reacted the way Eliza....

'Henry, you are an infernal, damned pain in the arse,' Pickering told him, rising.

'Why, because I had no interest in throwing you into the street?' Henry asked.

'No, because you are forcing me to do this!' With that, Pickering put his hands on either side of Henry's head and pulled him forward into a rough, but oddly sensual kiss.

It was as if the kiss awakened something in him -- something he had always known might be there, but had never acknowledged. Not once, but a hundred times during Eliza's tutelage, he had compared her behaviour to that of Pickering's, and always found it wanting in the worst, the most frustrating ways. Where Eliza was demanding, Pickering was amiable and yielding. Where she pursued flights of fancy that circumvented logic and reason altogether, Pickering always had a sensible thought to offer. Where she succumbed to Henry's awkward and formal pecks on the hand, the cheek, the lips.... Henry was wrong: Pickering could be demanding. Very demanding.

His hands came up to enfold Pickering's. He stepped forward, leaning his taller, longer body against the older man's, and found it strong and warm, not frail as he'd always imagined the man's health to be. 'I do ... love ... Eliza,' he said, deepening the kiss, marvelling at the way Pickering's teeth and chin and stubbly cheek felt against his own.

'Of ... course,' Pickering said. Now his hands threaded through Henry's hair, and oh, he wanted Pickering to tug on it more. "Only ... natural....'

'She ... can't ... she wouldn't....'

'My dear Henry, she already knows. She suspected it ages ago,' Pickering told him, stunning him into stillness.

'She does?' he asked dumbly.

'It's all right,' Pickering assured him. 'I've promised her we shall go on just as we have been. If that is acceptable to you ...?'

'Accept ...? Pickering --'

'My name is James,' the Colonel whispered in Henry's ear. The hot breath sent a shudder through him that had nothing to do with the liberty of calling his friend by his Christian name. 'I've wanted to hear you say it now, for a long time. I've been waiting until I was sure you felt the same as I.'

'James,' Henry repeated, again following the lead, but now somehow not at all upset. He was rewarded by another, deeper kiss. 'Just as we have been,' he promised both of them. All three of them.

'Just as we have been.' James nodded. He bent his head and once more planted his lips over Henry's. 'After all, a woman cannot be _entirely_ like a man.' Smiling, he led Henry quietly up the stairs.

Colonel James Pickering would always count it singular luck that Henry Higgins had met him on the same night as Eliza Doolittle. Without her, they might never have had such a perfect excuse to live as one, albeit rather unusual, family.


End file.
